12 Common Logo Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

Logo design is a fine art. Get it right, and you end up with an iconic logo that lasts for decades. Get it wrong, and you’re stuck with a logo that people remember for all the wrong reasons. Luckily, common logo mistakes are easy to fix – if you know what you’re doing!

We’ve seen a lot of logos in our time (a looot of logos). So we decided to make a list of the most common mistakes we’ve come across, plus tips and fixes you can use when designing your own.

Let’s get into it!

Avoid the worst logo mistakes before they happen

Being intentional in how you approach your logo can save you time and effort in the process. Before we look at examples of design mistakes, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• 🔍Do your research: Knowing your market and audience is key. You want a logo that fits your audience, so do plenty of research to inform and support your design choices.
  
• 🧩 Don’t overcomplicate things: Great designers make complex things easy to understand. Visually, this means keeping everything clear, simple, and intentional. Don’t stress about creating a masterpiece – keep it functional.
  
• 📱Keep your logo flexible: One of the most common mistakes new designers make with their logo is not designing with different applications in mind. Think about where your logo might appear – your website, social icons, packaging, billboards, and magazines – and make sure it’ll work in all sizes and situations!
• 🎨Be original (but check what others are doing too): Your logo should represent what’s unique about you and your business – but it’s also worth checking what your competitors are up to. If you’re noticing that a lot of logos in your space look the same, ask yourself why. Is this a signal to take a different path – or stay close to the tracks?
• 🗣️Keep trying, and get lots of feedback: Nobody gets it right the first time. Even professional designers create tons of logos before getting to the final version. The main thing is that you keep going, and get some feedback on how your logo is landing.

Now that we’ve covered the high-level stuff, it’s time to jump into the design side of things – actual logo mistakes (and how to avoid them).

To keep things simple, we’ve split the most common design mistakes into a few categories: Color, Shapes and Symbols, and Typography. Enjoy!

How you use color can make or break your logo

Bad color choices can ruin a decent logo. Here are the top logo mistakes to avoid when it comes to color theory in logo design.

Mistake #1: Clashing color tints and shades

A common reason logo colors don’t work together is because they have different saturations and hues. Even for a seasoned designer, making a pure tone red work with a soft pastel blue is HARD to pull off.

Tip: Tints and shades determine how pure a color tone appears to us.

If you’re going for different color combinations in your logo, pick ones with similar saturation and value. Our take? Keep it simple at first. 

Try designing your logo without any colors to start with, and get the overall silhouette down. (Pro designers will often do this to uncover bigger problems with a logo – like shape and readability – before they even get into color choices!)

Mistake #2: Using logo colors that don’t match your brand

Unless you’re trying to go into lifetime aura debt, don’t use a color in your logo that doesn’t appear anywhere else in your brand identity.

Simply put, your logo should reflect your brand. When it comes to color, this is even more important. If you mismatch your logo and brand colors, it makes you look lost from the beginning.

The new logo for the National Football Museum in Manchester, England. A beautiful example of the recent neon logo trend and an amazing case study in how to apply your logo design to your wider brand identity. Designed by Poke.

Mistake #3: Too many colors

Too much color in a logo can be super jarring. Unless there’s a clear reason behind it, using too many colors means you can’t figure out what palette to go with – which isn’t a good look.

If you’re going to use color in your logo, work with two or three colors that have a clear relationship to one another. (If you’re stuck, check out some of our color combinations for inspiration).

Colors are closely tied to our emotions, acting as cues that help us navigate the world. Choosing specific colors can signal certain feelings and moods, so be mindful of your color choices!

Mistake #4: Not enough color

On the other hand, not using enough color in your logo can be a huge problem too. 

After analyzing over 25,000 logos made with our logo maker last year, one thing’s clear: muted colors are out. Bright, bold, high-saturation logos are in — and brands that get it are winning attention fast.

As we doomscroll our way into oblivion with what little focus we collectively have left, what better way to scrape those last bits of dopamine out of our tubs than with bright, bold colors. Neon has literally never been so back!

While monochrome logos look great in certain contexts, don’t be afraid to lead with a vibrant color or two, especially if your brand is the kind that needs a bit more pop.

Koho’s bold new identity features a dynamic new logo mark and vibrant color palette. Designed in-house.

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Pick your logo shapes and symbols wisely!

Behind more than a few logo fails lies a poor use of shapes and symbols. Since both these elements are a key part of how your logo carries meaning, they’re ones you definitely want to get right.

Mistake #5: Using the wrong logo containers

Containers (shapes that contain your logo) can be a really handy way to emphasize certain information. Containers can use negative space to highlight a specific theme, or simply add context to your logo for aesthetic appeal.

However, you’ve got to get the balance right. 

Too big, and your logo is overpowered by all that extra space. Too small, and your poor logo will be all boxed in. Using the wrong type of container can also confuse things visually, so be careful!

As a rule of thumb, ask yourself if a container adds to or takes away from your logo. Test out different combinations until you land on something that fits. If you’re struggling to make your logo container work, don’t use one!

Source: kashiwasato.com

Uniqlo’s unique dual-language logo features both English and Japanese Katakana. Designed by Kashiwa Sato, Uniqlo’s bold logo mark is a great example of using a container for added visual impact.

Mistake #6: Inappropriate logo icons

A logo icon sits beside your logo text and complements it visually. At least – that’s what it’s supposed to do!

• Great logo icons have a simple but effective relationship with the logo text, and also work on their own (these are also known as ‘logo marks’)
• Bad logo icons fight for attention, don’t make any sense, and undermine your logo design. 

Take Headspace’s logo icon for example. It’s literally just a circle – so why does it work so well? 

Look a bit closer and you’ll see it’s not quite perfect. Since Headspace is a mindfulness app about accepting things as they are, their logo mark actually fits perfectly (or imperfectly?)

Matching your logo icon to an element of your brand character is a must.

Mistake #7: No visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is all about designing for how the eye and brain work. We see big things, high contrast, and bright colors first, followed by small things, low contrast, and dull colors.

Confusing logos with bad (or no) visual hierarchy are full of random competing elements, weird sizing, and mismatched colors.

When designing a logo, think about how each element draws attention to itself, and in what order. 

Here’s a few things to keep in mind for your logo’s visual hierarchy:

Mistake #8: Odd use of scale

One of the most common logo design mistakes we’ve seen is a misuse of scale. (Think HUGE logo icon with a teeny-tiny line of text). 

As we mentioned, great design is made with the eye in mind. This means creating harmony between the sizes of every part of your logo.

Fonts can make a logo flourish ✨ or fail 💀

Just like your ex, typography is a great example of the phrase, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Here are some common mistakes we see people make with their logo fonts, type shi. (No, literally, it’s about type).

Mistake #9: Choosing the wrong font

Choosing a good font is one of the most important things to get right when designing your logo. You want to pick a font that matches your brand character and suits your business.

Starting a crypto company? Maybe that jaunty medieval cursive script isn’t the best call, bro. Need a logo for your Etsy store? Perhaps ‘aggressive death metal font’ isn’t the play right now (unless that’s exactly what you’re going for).

Check out some of the top font trends of 2025 if you’re looking for a place to start!

Mistake #10: Bad alignment and spacing

Even with graphic logos and custom fonts, you want your logo text to be lined up and spaced out just right.

• Alignment is all about how your logo ‘sits’ on a baseline, and where it lines up with other elements in the overall design. 
• Kerning is about the spacing between individual letters (not to be confused with tracking, which is about the spacing between every letter in the word)

A mistake people often make with logo fonts is having arbitrary (or metric) kerning, as opposed to what’s known as optical kerning. 

Optical kerning takes into account the unique spaces between different types of letters, rather than just spacing them all out by the same amount.

Source: Berkeley

A perfect example of optical kerning done right. UC Berkeley’s brand new logo is the culmination of a two year project to unify the prestigious university’s brand with its wider University of California brand. The new font is a modern reimagining of the historic 1930s typeface ‘University of California Old Style’, designed by Jeremy Mickel’s type foundry.

Source: Berkeley

Berkeley’s vibrant new brand showing their new logo font in action. 

Mistake #11: Strange font combinations

A super common mistake in logo design is using fonts that don’t sit well together.

Every Oscar-worthy performer had great co-stars. Mikey Madison had Yura Borisov, Cillian Murphy had Robert Downey Jr., and John Malkovich had John Malkovich.

In the same way, your logo fonts need to support each other.

There’s no hard rule on how many fonts you can use in your logo, but if you’re just starting out, we recommend sticking to one or two. 

Mistake #12: Mixing upper and lower case

Standard design practice for logos is to stick to one case. This could be all-caps, lowercase, or (less commonly) what’s known as ‘title case’ – where the first letter of each word is capitalized.

But sometimes, even the big guys get it wrong.

As we saw in our post on the top logo redesigns of 2024, British car giant Jaguar recently rebranded in one of the most controversial swerves in recent memory.

The new logo featured a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, making it technically read something like ‘JaGUar’ (insert Spongebob chicken meme here). 

Jaguar’s infamous logo redesign ditched the legendary leaping jaguar mark that had defined the brand for decades.

As a general rule, try to keep your logo font consistent across cases and letter sizes, unless you have some real strong reasons for doing so!

What does bad logo design look like in practice? Recent examples from top brands

If Jaguar’s infamous logo redesign taught us anything, it’s that nobody is immune to common logo mistakes. Here are a few more recent examples from other well-known brands.

Superbowl LX – The logo with a lot going on

Granted, Super Bowl logos have always been known for being over the top. But Superbowl 60 takes it to a whole new level.

If there was a Super Bowl for logo mistakes, this would win: clashing colors, too many colors, noisy visual hierarchy, ugly font choices, bad spacing, weird use of scale and perspective – to name a few.

Commonwealth Games 2026 – Across the pond…still a lot going on

If there was a Commonwealth Games for logo mistakes…you get the idea. The iconic Commonwealth Games’ 2026 logo has it all: actual imitation neon graphics, a visual hierarchy that’s fighting itself, aggressive kerning, disconnect between logo elements, and color combos that would be at home on a 90s bus seat. 

OpenAI –  What’s with all the AI logos being so…bad?

It’s clean, it’s modern, it’s…really dull. ChatGPT monolith and our future overlords OpenAI have stripped back their old logo to the bare essentials, in what might be the most utilitarian logo ever made.

Besides some questionable kerning, there isn’t that much ‘wrong’ with this logo, and it’s a welcome move away from the trend of all AI logos looking like buttholes (as one astute redditor observed).

But it’s just so boring – no charm, no story, no style, and no interesting design elements to bring it all to life.

If only there was some way to use the incredible power of AI to design a logo with some real personality! (flawless segue incoming)

Fix your logo with Looka’s logo maker!

We know that designing a logo for your small business can feel like it comes with a million rules. (Because it kinda does.)

But here’s the truth: if your logo looks good and feels right for your brand, you’re winning. And you don’t need to memorize color theory, typography jargon, or design principles to make this happen.

Instead, let Looka’s AI-powered logo maker handle the heavy lifting, and fix common logo mistakes before they even appear.

Here’s how to do it:

Fix your logo colors

• Choose punchy color combinations rooted in real color theory and trending palettes.
• Instantly test bright, modern color mockups — no guesswork, just good vibes.

Fix your logo shapes and symbols

• Thousands of icons and symbols ready to go with a single prompt.
• Smart layouts show you monograms, icon options, and container styles — automatically.

Fix your logo font

• Get font recommendations that match your industry and brand, based on businesses just like yours.
• Easy letter spacing and kerning tools help your logo text sit just right.